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Navigating Israel’s Nuclear ‘Samson Option’
In any rationality-based strategic calculus, the “Samson Option” — which refers to an Israeli nuclear strike — would refer not to a last-resort act of national vengeance, but to a persuasive limit on existential threats.
When taken together with Israel’s intentionally ambiguous nuclear strategy, an outdated doctrine commonly referred to as “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” or “Israel’s bomb in the basement” (amimut in Hebrew), more compelling threat postures could prove effective. To be truly promising, however, an Israeli Samson Option would need to 1) coincide with an incremental and selective end to “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” and 2) pertain to Iran directly, not just to terrorist proxies.
There are no conceivable circumstances in which Samson could offer Israel useful applications regarding Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, or any other jihadist foes.
Israeli strategists will need to consider factors beyond what is taking place right now between Israel and its jihadist adversaries. Since military crises in other parts of the world could spill over into the Middle East, strategic planners should begin to clarify Israel’s operational preparations regarding Samson. This is especially the case where a spill-over could involve the threat or actual use of nuclear weapons.
Though Iran is still “only” pre-nuclear, it already has the capacity to use radiation dispersal weapons and/or launch conventional rockets at Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor. Moreover, Tehran has close ties to Pyongyang, and it is not inconceivable that a nuclear North Korea might operate as a strategic stand-in for a not-yet-nuclear Iran.
For disciplined Israeli strategists, geopolitical context matters. There can be no logic-based assessment of probabilities because the events under consideration would be unprecedented. In logic and mathematics, true probabilities can never be ascertained out of nothing. They can be drawn only from the determinable frequency of pertinent past events.
These are not narrowly political or intuitive calculations. As an operationally meaningful concept, the Samson Option references a residual deterrence doctrine founded upon credible threats (whether implicit or explicit) of overwhelming nuclear retaliation or counter-retaliation. These are unconventional threats to thwart more-or-less expected enemy state aggressions. Reasonably, any such massive last-resort doctrine could enter into force only where enemy aggressions would imperil Israel’s continued existence as a viable nation-state. In the absence of expected aggressions from Iran, Israel would more prudently rely upon an “escalation ladder.”
For doctrinal clarity, Israel’s nuclear forces should always remain oriented to deterrence ex ante, never to revenge ex post. It would do Israel little good to proffer Samson-level threats in response to “ordinary” or less than massive forms of enemy attack. Even where the principal operational object for Israel would be counter-terrorist success against Hamas, Hezbollah, etc., invoking Samson could make sense only vis-à-vis Hamas state patron Iran or Iran’s nuclear patron North Korea. In such nuanced calculations, assumptions of rationality could prove problematic.
For Israel’s nuclear deterrent to work against a still non-nuclear Iran, it is virtually inconceivable that it would need to include a Samson Option. In any crisis between Israel and Iran involving jihadist terror, Israel could almost certainly achieve “escalation dominance” without employing Samson. But if Iran were already an authentic nuclear adversary, its capacity to enhance surrogate terror capabilities would exceed any pre-nuclear constraints of competitive risk-taking. In these circumstances, Samson could prove necessary.
Israel’s basis for launching a preemptive strike against Iran without Samson could be rational only before that state turned verifiably nuclear. A foreseeable non-Samson plan for preemption would involve more direct Iranian involvement in the continuing terror war against Israel on behalf of Hamas, Hezbollah, etc. By setting back Iranian nuclear efforts and infrastructures, such pre-Samson involvement could offer Israel an asymmetrical power advantage in the region. This larger opportunity would be the result of Israel’s not yet having to fear a nuclear war against Iran.
There would be related matters of intra-crisis communications. As an element of any ongoing strategic dialogue, the basic message of an Israeli Samson Option would need to remain uniform and consistent. It should signal to an adversary state the unstated promise of a counter-city (“counter value”) nuclear reprisal. Israel would also need to avoid signaling to its Iranian adversary any sequential gradations of nuclear warfighting.
Israel’s “bottom line” reasoning would likely be as follows: For Israel, exercising a Samson Option threat is not apt to deter any Iranian aggressions short of nuclear and/or massively large-scale conventional (including biological) first strikes. Therefore, Samson can do little to prevent Iran from its enthusiastic support of anti-Israel jihadists.
Whatever the Samson Option’s precise goals, its key objective should remain constant and conspicuous. This objective is to keep Israel “alive,” not (as presented in Biblical imagery) to stop the Jewish State from “dying alone.” In this peremptory objective, Israeli policy should deviate from the Biblical Samson narrative.
Ultimately, Samson, in all relevant military nuclear matters, should be about how best to manage urgent processes of strategic dissuasion. At least for now, Israel’s presumed nuclear strategy, though not yet clearly articulated, is oriented toward nuclear war avoidance and not to nuclear war fighting. From all standpoints, this represents Israel’s only correct orientation.
The Samson Option could never protect Israel as a comprehensive nuclear strategy by itself. This option should never be confused with Israel’s more generalized or “broad spectrum” nuclear strategy, one that would seek to maximize deterrence at incrementally less apocalyptic levels of military engagement.
At this point, various questions will need to be raised. Above all: How can the Samson Option best serve Israel’s general strategic requirements? Though the primary mission of Israel’s nuclear weapons should be to preserve the Jewish State — not to wreak havoc upon foes when all else has seemingly been lost — obvious preparations for a Samson Option could still improve Israel’s nuclear deterrence and preemption capabilities.
As soon as possible, even during the current Gaza war with Hamas, Jerusalem will need to shift from “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” to “selective nuclear disclosure.” Among other things, this explicit shift would allow Israel to clarify that its nuclear weapons are not too large for actual operational use against Iran. In essence, this complex clarification would be the reciprocal of Israel’s Samson Option and would cover the complete spectrum of Israel’s nuclear deterrence options.
There will be corresponding legal issues. Israeli resorts to conventional and defensive first strikes could prove permissible or law-enforcing under authoritative international law. In such cases, Israeli preemptions would contain a jurisprudential counterpart to nuclear weapons use. This counterpart should be referenced formally as “anticipatory self-defense.”
Concerning long-term Israeli nuclear deterrence, recognizable preparations for a Samson Option could help convince Iran or other designated enemy states that massive aggressions against Israel would never be gainful. This could prove most compelling if Israel’s “Samson weapons” were 1) coupled with some explicit level of nuclear disclosure (thereby effectively ending Israel’s longstanding posture of nuclear ambiguity); 2) recognizably invulnerable to enemy first strikes; and 3) “counter-city”/”counter-value” in declared mission function. Additionally, in view of what nuclear strategists sometimes refer to as the “rationality of pretended irrationality,” Samson could enhance Israeli nuclear deterrence by demonstrating a more evident Israeli willingness to take existential risks.
On occasion, the nuclear deterrence benefits of “pretended irrationality” could depend on prior Iranian awareness of Israel’s counter-city or counter-value targeting posture. Such a posture was recommended some 20 years ago by the Project Daniel Group in its confidential report to then Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon. Residually, however, to best ensure that Israel could still engage in nuclear warfighting if its counter-value nuclear deterrence were to fail, Israel would more openly adopt a “mixed” counter-value/counter-force nuclear targeting doctrine.
In reference to strategies of preemption, Israeli preparations for a Samson Option — explicit, recognizable and not just sotto voce — could help convince Israel’s leadership that defensive first strikes could sometimes be gainful.
In all cases involving Samson and Israeli nuclear deterrence, visible last-resort nuclear preparations could enhance Israel’s preemption options by underscoring a bold national willingness to take existential risks. However, displaying such risks could become a double-edged sword. The fact that these are uncharted waters and there exist no precedents from which to extrapolate science-based probabilities means Israel would need to move with determination and caution.
What about “pretended irrationality?” That complex calculus could become a related part of Samson. Israel’s leaders will need to remain mindful of this integration. Brandished too “irrationally,” Israeli preparations for a Samson Option, though unwitting, could encourage Iranian preemptions. This peril would be underscored by pressures on both Israel and Iran to achieve intra-crisis “escalation dominance.” Also significant in this unpredictable environment of competitive risk-taking would be either or both sides’ deployment of expanding missile defenses.
This hearkens back to the early days of Cold War nuclear deterrence between the United States and the Soviet Union, days of “mutually assured destruction” or MAD. Either Israeli or Iranian efforts to reduce nuclear retaliatory force vulnerabilities could incentivize the other to more hurriedly strike first; that is, to “preempt the preemption.” In reference to international law, close attention would then need to be directed toward the peremptory rules of “military necessity.”
If left to itself, neither deterred nor preempted, Iran could threaten to bring the Jewish State face-to-face with Dante’s Inferno. Such a portentous scenario has been made more credible by the recent strategic strengthening of Iran by its tighter alignment with North Korea and its surrogate fighters in Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. At some not-too-distant point, a coordinated Iran-Hezbollah offensive (complementing the Iran-Hamas offensive in Gaza) could signal more imminent existential perils for Israel. By definition, all such synergistic intersections would be taking place within the broadly uncertain context of “Cold War II.”
In extremis atomicum, these hazards could become so unique and formidable that employing a Samson Option would represent the only available strategic option for Israel. In the best of all possible worlds, Israel would have no need to augment or even maintain its arsenal of deterrent threat options – especially untested nuclear components – but this ideal reconfiguration of world politics remains a long way off. In that ideal world, Israel could anticipate the replacement of realpolitik (power politics) with Westphalian international politics. Such a replacement would be based on the awareness that planet Earth is an inter-dependent and organic whole.
Plainly, the time for such replacement has not yet arrived. It follows that Jerusalem will need to prepare visibly for a possible Samson Option. The point of this doctrinal imperative would not be to give preference to any actual applications of Samson, but to best ensure that Israel could deter all survival-threatening enemy aggressions.
For the moment, Israel remains in protracted war with Hamas. It can succeed in this conflict only by weakening jihadist state-sponsor Iran. In the best-case scenario, Iran would remain non-nuclear and Israeli management of Iranian terror support would remain within the bounds of conventional deterrence. If, however, Iran were permitted to cross the nuclear weapons threshold by acquiring chain-reaction nuclear weapons (not just radiation dispersal weapons), Israel’s subsequent efforts at deterrence of Iran would become vastly more problematic. At that point, ipso facto, Israel could require a Samson Option to maintain its “escalation dominance.”
There does exist an intermediate, if paradoxical, scenario for Israel. If Iran should become involved in any direct military action against Israel before becoming a fully nuclear adversary, the Jewish State could find itself with a strategic and law-enforcing opportunity to preemptively destroy Iranian nuclear infrastructures before they become operational. Though advancing such a scenario could also create the false impression of planned Israeli aggression, it would more correctly represent permissible self-defense. Most importantly, of course, such an Israeli preemption could prevent a full-scale nuclear war with Iran.
How should Israel navigate chaos? Whether in the Old Testament or in more-or-less synchronous Greek and Roman thought, chaos can be understood as something potentially positive: an intellectual tabula rasa which, if thoughtfully “filled in,” can prepare the world for all possibilities, both sacred and profane. In essence, chaos can represent an inchoate place from which an expanding civilizational opportunity can still originate.
Such thinking is unorthodox, to be sure, but for Israel it could prove manifestly useful. With such thinking, chaos is never just a “predator” that swallows everything whole: omnivorous, callous, indiscriminate, and without higher purpose. Here, chaos is considered instead as an auspicious “openness,” a protean realm from within which new kinds of opportunity can be revealed.
This means the chaos in the Middle East need not necessarily be interpreted by Israel’s senior military planners as a harbinger of further regional violence and instability. In some hard-to-conceptualize respects, at least, such chaos could represent a condition for national security and survival. Though there are still rough seas ahead, their waves could be harnessed for a purposeful strategic direction.
Louis René Beres, Emeritus Professor of International Law at Purdue, is the author of many books and articles dealing with nuclear strategy and nuclear war, including Apocalypse: Nuclear Catastrophe in World Politics (University of Chicago Press, 1980) and Security or Armageddon: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (D.C. Heath/Lexington, 1986). His twelfth book, Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy, was published by Rowman and Littlefield in 2016. A version of this article was originally published by The BESA Center.
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Here’s a Partial List of Assaults on American Jews in June
Anti-Israel demonstrators outside the Adas Torah synagogue in the heavily-Jewish Pico-Robertson area of Los Angeles, June 23, 2024. Photo: Screenshot
Street protests targeting Jews and Jewish institutions, and institutions deemed supportive of Israel, escalated in June and were characterized by threats of violence and antisemitic rhetoric. Among the most notable incidents was a Los Angeles march by keffiyeh clad and masked protestors organized by the Palestinian Youth Movement and Code Pink, where Jews were physically assaulted outside of a synagogue.
The confrontations spilled over into the surrounding Jewish neighborhood, where a number of Jews were beaten and sprayed with mace. Reports indicate Los Angeles police, who had been warned about the event, were initially instructed to stand down and then protected protestors and prohibited Jews from entering the synagogue. Several injuries and one arrest were reported.
President Biden condemned the Los Angeles attack without naming the perpetrators as did Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass and other local politicians including Governor Gavin Newsom, all within a 30-minute period. The protests were defended by anti-Israel activists and the ACLU (for the non-violent part) on the grounds that the real estate fair was “political activity.”
In another egregious example, protestors from Within Our Lifetime (WOL) in New York City besieged an exhibition about the Nova music festival massacre of October 7. Police rushed the waiting viewers into the exhibition space while protestors lit flares and shouted “long live intifada” and “Israel go to hell.”
In another pro-Hamas and pro-Hezbollah protest, a two-mile long group organized by the People’s Forum, Palestinian Youth Movement, and the ANSWER Coalition encircled the White House. Protestors shouted “We don’t want no two states, we’re taking back 48” and “kill another Zionist now” while vandalizing local monuments with slogans including “Death to Amerikkka,” “Death to Israel,” “Death to Zionists,” and “Al-Qasam make us proud. Kill another soldier now.”
No arrests were made, and mainstream media reported only slogans such as “free Palestine.”
Other public events have been co-opted by anti-Israel protests, notably gay pride parades. In Philadelphia the pride parade was blocked by anti-Israel protestors who shouted “Now, Now, Now, Now, Burn Israel to the ground.” The Washington D.C., and Denver pride parades were similarly disrupted.
In one June incident, the homes of Brooklyn Museum trustees were vandalized by WOL activists with red paint, red triangles symbolizing Hamas targets, and the words “blood is on your hands.” The home of the head of the board, Anne Pasternak, was painted with the words “White Supremacist Zionist.”
The museum has been targeted repeatedly by pro-Hamas protestors, who have now attacked the institution for permitting arrests of protestors who took over part of the building.
Among the official responses to escalating pro-Hamas violence have been calls to reinstate mask bans which had been aimed at the Ku Klux Klan. New York Governor Kathy Hochul, New York City mayor Eric Adams, and Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass — all Democrats — spoke in favor, while the ACLU and “civil liberties”advocates expressed opposition.
A group took credit for three firebombings on the University of California at Berkeley campus in “in retaliation for UCPD’s violent assaults on vulnerable student demonstrators and to punish the university of kkkalifornia system for supporting the genocidal Zionist-Israel entity.” The Columbia University Jewish Voice for Peace chapter expressed support for the perpetrator.
Efforts were made to disrupt remaining campus activities. At Columbia University, an encampment was set up to harass attendees at alumni weekend. Building takeovers also occurred at Cal State Los Angeles and Oregon State University. At Cal State, the takeover trapped a number of staff members inside the building, including the president, and vandalism was widespread. No arrests have been made.
University and local authorities continue to take little or no action against protestors. Notably, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg dropped most charges against students and others arrested for taking over a building at Columbia University.
Harassment of Jewish students and campus organizations remained steady in June. The University of Southern California Chabad house and the University of Minnesota Hillel building were vandalized. Student for Justice in Palestine (SJP) remains at the forefront of targeting Jews on campus. At the University of Pittsburgh, the SJP chapter demanded , among other things, that the Hillel chapter be banned from campus for its support of Zionism.
Direct SJP protests were also held at the Baruch College Hillel, which included banners stating “Hillel stands with genocide,” “It is right to rebel, Hillel go to hell,” and “Synagogue of Satan.” The masked protestors also wore Hamas and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) headbands.
Faculty support for anti-Israel students was highlighted by the events surrounding publication of a tendentious and absurd paper by the Columbia Law Review that alleged “nakba” should be a new category in international law. After secretly soliciting and then circumventing the normal review process the paper was accepted. The board of directors then asked the student editors to delay posting the piece online leading to accusations of censorship.
The student editors then published the piece and leaked the story to the media while the directors shut down the website. The piece was later published with a board disclaimer regarding the irregular process. The incident illustrated how student activists have helped subvert international law by controlling law reviews and surrounding discourse.
In the K-12 sphere, walkouts occurred across the country, and support of anti-Israel activities at the New York City Department of Education was also shown by the fact that it had hired prominent BDS activist Debbie Almontaser to conduct “workshops” on the Gaza war for teachers. Jewish teachers complained that the materials presented were deeply anti-Israel.
The predictable targeting of Jews by teachers and parents reached its peak in June at a fifth grade commencement ceremony in Brooklyn when a Jewish family was physically attacked by an Arabic-speaking family shouting “Free Palestine!” “Gaza is Ours!” and “Death to Israel.”
A presentation made by teachers to high school students in the Fort Lee, New Jersey, Public School District — which described Hamas as “armed resistance,” the “Nakba” as “the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and near destruction of Palestinian society,” and the Gaza war as “genocide” — is another event criticized after the fact. The tendentiousness of the presentation was explicitly recognized by the teachers who confiscated students’ cellphones and warned in advance that it was “biased.”
Most egregiously, efforts are being made by schools to institutionalize anti-Israel bias and Palestinian narratives in the guise of outlawing “anti-Palestinian racism.” At the Toronto District School Board, proposals were adopted in June to outlaw this supposed hatred. While the Toronto proposal was vague, other cases indicate that objecting to the Palestinian narrative of the nakba, Palestinian descriptions of Zionist as racism, and demands for Israel to be erased, are examples of “anti-Palestinian racism.”
The June political primaries showed the pivotal place of Israel and antisemitism at all levels of American politics. In the most closely observed race, Westchester County Executive George Latimer defeated Squad member Rep. Jamaal Bowman by a large margin in a New York Democratic primary. Bowman blamed the loss on Israel supporters, Jews, and AIPAC.
Another key test will come in August when Rep. Cori Bush faces a Democratic primary challenge in Missouri, and Rep. Debbie Wasserstein-Schultz (D-FL) is facing a challenge from a Jewish anti-Zionist.
In the international sphere, the Maldives announced that it was banning Israelis from entering. After an outcry and calls for a boycott of the country by the Jewish community, the Maldive government announced it was reconsidering. One consideration was apparently the fact that the edict as written banned Arab citizens of Israel in addition to Jews.
Anti-Israel bias continues to dominate and divide the various communities in the arts, with attacks from Palestinian supporters leading to sudden revocation of corporate support for festivals and other events. In Britain, Barclays has dropped support for music festivals after protests from artists regarding the firm’s alleged business relationship with Israel. Several festivals boycotted Barclays, which has been long targeted by the anti-Israel movement including recently vandalizing of branches around Britain.
Similarly, the investment firm Baillie Gifford ended its support for all book festivals in Britain after being attacked for its minor business links with Israel and alleged relationship with fossil fuel. Critics note that continued attacks on corporate sponsors will undermine arts funding in Britain and jeopardize the existence of book festivals. A similar process is emerging in the US where the South by Southwest festival announced it would no longer accept support from the US Army or weapons companies after boycott threats from various bands.
The politicization of Wikipedia, where a handful of anti-Israel editors have now elected to ban the ADL as a source, parallels that of the media, albeit behind the fig leaves of anonymity and decentralization. The use of Wikipedia as a source for generative artificial intelligence training promises to expand and cement anti-Israel bias and antisemitism.
The author is a contributor to SPME, where a significantly different version of this article was first published.
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Watchdog Group Calls on Talent Agency to Drop Former ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Star for Promoting Antisemitic Blood Libels
Jesse Williams at the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival World Premiere for “FOLLOWING HARRY” held at the SVA Theater in New York, NY, USA. Photo: LJ Fotos/AdMedia/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
The watchdog group StopAntisemitism is calling on a global talent agency to drop actor and former “Grey’s Anatomy” star Jesse Williams as its client for sharing antisemitic content, including blood libels and anti-Israel conspiracy theories, on social media.
The American actor recently uploaded a series of posts on his Instagram Stories that additionally support antisemitic tropes of Jewish power and misinformation about Israel’s military actions during its ongoing war against Hamas terrorists controlling the Gaza Strip. One post featured a world map that pinpointed Israel and claimed that “your freedom of speech is being controlled” by the Jewish state.
In another post on his Instagram Story, Williams falsely alleged that in Gaza, Israel “forced a Palestinian captive to have sex with a dog, is siccing attack dogs on elderly woman,” and shot a six-year-old child “355 times.”
One of his accusations appeared to stem from the Qatar-based news network Al Jazeera reporting on footage of what it claimed was an Israeli military dog mauling an elderly Palestinian woman in her home in the northern Gaza city of Jabaliya. However, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) revealed that the dog was actually abducted by the terrorist group Hamas, which used the canine to film an “attack” as anti-Israel propaganda before killing the animal and booby-trapping its body with explosives in the event that Israeli soldiers tried to retrieve their canine comrade.
Williams also reposted a message that falsely claimed Zionists “consider Palestinian deaths a good thing, creating favorable demographic shifts in the direction of a Jewish minority in Palestine.” The post further claimed that “mass Palestinian death is a major Zionist ‘war aim.’”
A fourth Instagram post uploaded by the actor featured a quote attributed to Cairo-based comedian Bassem Youssef, who said recently on the NewsNation show “Cuomo,” hosted by Chris Cuomo, that, “We will only be safe if Israel is safe, and Israel will be safe if all of us are dead.”
Jewish groups and scholars of antisemitism have argued that attributing to Jews a desire to harm Palestinians is a modern iteration of the medieval antisemitic blood libel, which falsely claims that Jews use the blood of non-Jewish children in their religious rituals.
Williams is represented by Creative Artists Agency (CAA), which is the world’s leading entertainment, sports, and media agency, according to its website. CAA did not immediately respond to The Algemeiner‘s request for comment regarding Williams’ social media posts.
Liora Rez, executive director of StopAntisemitism, told The Algemeiner on Tuesday that her organization “calls on CAA to immediately break ties with antisemite Jesse Williams.”
“His propagating such horrifying antisemitic tropes are unforgivable,” Raz added.
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No, Israel Is Not at All Comparable to the Nazis
Egyptian trucks carrying humanitarian aid make their way to the Gaza Strip, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, at the Kerem Shalom crossing in southern Israel, May 30, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
In a repulsive Guardian op-ed, the New York-based writer John Oakes not only falsely accused Israel of causing the mass starvation of Palestinians in Gaza, but likened the situation to the Nazis’ starvation of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto (“The starvation of Gaza is a perverse repudiation of Judaism’s values,” June 25).
Oakes’ antisemitic trope, comparing Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to the Nazis’ treatment of Jews during the Holocaust, has sadly been employed or legitimised by Guardian contributors previously.
Oakes begins with a lie:
For many months now, it has been no secret that one of America’s closest allies has been using hunger as a weapon against a civilian population. That hunger is being used by Israel is supremely ironic, given the particular role that privation from food plays both in Jewish philosophy and in the grim history of the Jewish people. It is a charge that the Jewish state has repeatedly denied in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
This is the opposite of the truth.
The starvation narrative was given credibility in the mainstream media following a March report by Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) which alleged that famine was imminent and likely to occur by May in northern Gaza, and by July in other parts of the territory.
However, in early June, the IPC published a follow-up report titled, “Famine Review Committee: Review of the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) IPC-Compatible Analysis for the Northern Governorates of the Gaza Strip.”
That report concluded that the analysis published in March was not plausible, pointed out the omission of certain categories of food deliveries, and noted that “the available evidence does not indicate that famine is currently occurring.” The analysis also acknowledged that the daily kilocalories requirements for Palestinians in Gaza were surpassed in April, and found that the food supply in Gaza is increasing each month.
Even prior to that conclusion by the Famine Review Committee, multiple reports and studies — citing fatal methodological and data collection flaws — contradicted the initial warnings of imminent starvation in Gaza by the IPC. One of the reports, by Columbia University professors Awi Federgruen and Ran Kivetz, analyzed available data and found that “sufficient amounts of food are being supplied into Gaza.” According to the paper, “the mean calories available per person per day in Gaza in January was 3,076 kcal, for February that figure dropped to 1,741 kcal, but then rose in March to 3,446 kcal and rose again in April to 4,580 kcal.”
After telling that lie, the Guardian contributor pivots to the Nazi analogy:
Even Germany, which for obvious historical reasons has long been one of Israel’s staunchest allies, finally has begun to warn against using starvation to win a war. The Germans would know about such a tactic. During the second world war, 380,000 people were crowded into the Warsaw ghetto, barricaded, and left to die by the Nazis.
Much of what we know about the effects of long-term starvation comes from a manuscript smuggled out of the ghetto in 1942 and translated into English in the 1970s as Hunger Disease. The remarkable document was compiled by a heroic team of 28 Jewish doctors working under unimaginable conditions.
…
The suffering and the defiance of the inhabitants of the Warsaw ghetto have become touchstones for students of Jewish history, a story that every Jew knows well. As Holocaust museums struggle to address the Israel-Gaza war, the idea that we can somehow put what is happening in Gaza at a distant remove from the history of the Warsaw ghetto is grotesque. [emphasis added]
What’s truly grotesque is his comparison between the Warsaw Ghetto, implemented by a regime which murdered two out of every three Jews in Europe, and Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. The daily food rations in the Warsaw Ghetto, which housed as many as 460,000 Jews and was completely sealed off from the outside, were the equivalent of “one-tenth of the required minimum daily calorie intake” — causing an 80,000 to die of either starvation or disease. Most of those who survived were sent off to death camps.
By contrast, there have been no credible reports of Palestinians dying of starvation in Gaza, and aid continues to pour in to the Strip.
If there are any Nazi-analogies to be made in this war, it should be directed at Hamas, the genocidal antisemitic terror group whose sent death squads rampaging across southern Israel on Oct. 7th with the sole purpose of murdering, torturing, raping, mutilating, and taking hostage as many Jews as possible — a barbaric assault that represents the worst antisemitic massacre since the Holocaust.
Finally, Oakes’ vilification of the Jewish state reaches a crescendo further into the op-ed, when he reaches the culmination of his big lie, writing that, given the historical and religious history of Jews, “it is remarkable that of all nations, the Jewish state is using mass starvation as a method of warfare“ — a libel against the Jewish collective as morally obscene and toxic as the antisemitic medieval superstitions peddled for centuries against individual Jews.
Amidst an ongoing tsunami of antisemitism in the UK and elsewhere in the Jewish diaspora, the Guardian continues to incite the mob.
Adam Levick serves as co-editor of CAMERA UK – an affiliate of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA), where a version of this article first appeared.
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